Accent

Is it just where I live in Seattle or all of Washington that call buckets Pales and most of my family calls soda cola

 

Brisbane accents are super thick, oh man. Usually Sydney and Brisbane have the worst.

Us down here, In Melbourne, and Adelaide, we're kinda mellow with tones.

I'm not sure about Perth..... I think Perth accents are kinda neutral too.

 

Yah it's strong when i went to visit i was so confused with all there clangs i was just lost.

 

You forgot the Tassies. They're the worst.

 

OI BEN YEA. Tootol fookin boogans down thar. Eespecially in Hobart.

So bogan I feel pity for them hahahaha.

 

Yes you do, and I hear a difference even though I only live a few hours' drive above you. It's not strong, but there's a faint edge of American twang.

The only accents that really annoy me are the deep south ones where people...talk...really..slowly. Being Canadian, and my family talks fast even for that, I don't have the patience to listen to them.

Now, Canadian accents...I think the people in Ontario area have the clearest language. The prairie provinces draw it out a bit, almost a slight American edge. The west coast is fast and clipped, dropping the ends of words, and very informal in word choice. The territories have the most obvious Canadian mumble, they talk quietly and blur all the hard sounds. The Quebec francophones accent (when speaking French) is very rough compared to someone from France.
Newfoundlanders have the most awesome lilting accent and extremely fast speech, plus a large number of words that don't exist in any dictionary--and no "th" sound, it just comes out as "t". A girl told me once that Newfies can't tell the difference between "tree" and "tree"--you know, a tree that grows out of the ground, and the number tree.

...I had an L/R speech defect as a kid, which has faded into what sounds like a light accent. The most common guess I get is New Zealand.

 

Personally it's not the accent(s) I find annoying, but the way in which they are used. Accents are usually quite charming, but when you throw in word choices and such the annoying button is pushed.

Actually, word choices and personality. A lot of the Americans I have met are loud, brash, and prone to being far more in my face than a lot of British people. That comes across in how they speak and can cause an involuntary cringe.

Once I get over my belief they're going to be all up in my personal space the accents are delightful.

Or maybe my prejudice is showing.

 

Non-Scots can't tell or say the difference between 'Wales' and 'Whales', it's simply disappeared everywhere else. Can you?

Apparently 'horse' and 'hoarse', 'pawn' and 'pawn' are pronounced differently in most English dialects but I don't even hear the difference, let alone say it. Once upon a time, 'knot' and 'not' and 'plumb' and 'plum' were said differently, but not anymore. Interesting? Maybe only to me.

 

As far as I know "buckets" and "pails" are synonyms everywhere...or at least there are here in the Northeast too.

And "soda" is definitely the right word to refer to those sugary soft drinks..."pop" sounds a bit weird...calling all different kinds of soda "coke" like they do in the South is just stupid.

Here's a U.S. map of the different words for the soft drink. Interesting how we call it "soda" in the Northeast, and that also spread to take over all of California and Arizona and Las Vegas, yet the rest of the West uses "pop":

 

LOL. This is awesome! I saw the really dark red color for Birmingham, AL and I thought, "I bet the word is Coke". So I looked to the right, and sure enough... :lol:

 

I don't find American accents annoying in general. I actually like hearing different kinds of accents and dialects, I find the way languages mutate fascinating.

 

Oh and apparently 'look' and 'luck' don't sound the same in most places. I wouldn't know which one to change...

 

There's no accent in and of itself which I find irritating, 'cause any particular one can sound godawful by someone who is, basically, a jackass or meathead.

I've been worried about this as well, it seems that region accents are starting to disappear. My impression is that Americans move more frequently, even compared to the past, and interact with a variety of people with different regional backgrounds [especially in major areas] that smooths down the the distinctness of whatever accent they may've had.

 

I don't find any accents annoying in themselves. The "Bahston" accent is really unique, but can only be irritating if someone is saying something irritating. It's more about attitude for me than just the sound of it. If a guy with a thick Southern accent from whichever state was saying things like "thank you kindly, much abliged Ma'am," then you go "aww," some of us might even go "swoon." But if he's being loud, abrasive and saying "those dadgum sum bitches" then first you might laugh, but eventually you'd go "ugh, shut up already." :lol:

I, myself, have a Detroit/Michigander accent fused with a tad Arkansas only because I was raised by my Grandmother who is from rural Arkansas. She ran a farm and everything. Legit country girl my Gran. All of us who were raised by Gran have a bit of a southern twang and tend to pronounce some things wrong up here because we learned how to speak from her.

My Detroit/Michigander accent can be heard when I say "fridgerator," "baahx" (we stress our a's apparently), "yuh" instead of "you," "ja" instead of "did you," "comfterbul" instead of "comfortable," and "grosheries" instead of "grociers." I also pronounce "clothes" and "close" (as in shut) the same, which I never thought was weird until a cashier girl in Seattle complained about not being able to understand me. haha Anywho, the list is endless. I quite like it. My small Southern accent can be heard mainly with how I construct my sentences. They tend to have a Southern flow, if that makes sense, usually not the most proper and it can become especially thick when I get mad. You can also really hear it with "-or" words such as "for" and "your." I always say "fer" and "yer." I also don't see the difference between "dog" and "dawg" pronounciation wise.

Accents and languages are the best. They're all so interesting. I practice doing different accents, American and International, all the time. My favorite American accent is Jewish-American. I love the way Jewish people tend to talk--the rythm. I don't know if that's just the rythm of only New York Jewish people's accent or what, but I like it. My favorite international accent is, well actually it's a tie between Dublin Irish, Scottish, and the varying Northern English dialects, specifically leaning more toward Manchester and Yorkshire. I'm not sure were Derbyshire is (if it's Northern or not) but I really like that one as well. My favorite languages are Slavic ones, like Polish, Russian, and Czech, but I'd rather learn the actual languages than just do the accent in English, so I don't count those.

 

I prefer accent-neutrality, I dislike almost all strong accents American or otherwise.

 

Wow, never seen my county mentioned by someone outside of the UK, never mind its accent, so let me go on a ramble. In the north-west around Glossop it tends to be pretty identical to Manchester in all honesty, and the south of the county (Burton) it's more neutral with a Brummie twang, but there's a distinct area with a Derbyshire accent, even if it's not the strongest accent in the world. We're not in the north, but we like to think we are and it's a northern accent, I'd say.

http://sounds.bl.uk/related-content/TEXTS/021T-C0908X0051XX-1000A1.pdf

Things we say, or used to say. Sadly you hardly ever hear 'thou' or 'thee' (or 'dou'/'da' and 'dee', which are heard in north Derbyshire and Sheffield), or maintained gendered nouns as is done in almost everywhere else in the world, but a lot of it is still true.

(I'll stop now, I swear)

 

Christopher Walken....has the best voice ever...and accent. Just want to throw that out.

 

Miley Cyrus is annoying :/

Oi! Whose Tassie bashing?! Us Tasmanians have wicked accents!

 

:lol: No, you're grand. Thanks for the links. I love learning about this stuff from natives. First hand knowledge and all that. I first heard a Debryshire accent on a UK show called Misfits and one of the characters, Kelly, had such a thick accent that the others joked about how they couldn't understand her for a bit. She really did have the thickest accent out of everyone's on the show, so I was immediately drawn to it. Though, I did have to start watching the show with subtitles. I like mimicking more difficult dialects, it's a fun challenge.

Now, when you say 'Brummie' twang, what are you referencing? Is 'Brummie' a place or like a nickname of a place/people?

 

Oh that accent? That accent is kinda annoying. It sounds like someone from the East Midlands who's spent too much time in East London/Essex - you can tell by the way she says 'power' and 'life', which isn't local at all. Idk, I don't know many people from the city itself, even though it's only 30 minutes from me and I go out there a lot - it could be a pretty different accent for all I know! The villages round me definitely aren't like that anyway.

And I should've clarified - Brummie is the nickname for Birmingham's accent (just so you know: it's pronounced differently to the American one, more like 'Buhminum' I guess?). Can sound like they're constantly whinging.

How English and languages in general have come to be is pretty fascinating. In some ways, accents are simply selected remnants of the English of yesteryear that somehow haven't died out in some areas. Of course, there are always new innovations and with more English speakers than ever and greater mobility, there is more scope for faster change than ever. But since we don't live in a trilingual country of Old English/Old Norse/Anglo-Norman (amongst Gaelic/Welsh/British too) like in medieval Britain where there's little contact with people 50 miles away, never mind the other side of the world, there's probably going to be more convergence than divergence - shame!